Resistance - J.M. Dillard [40]
As she continued the examination, Beverly did her best to compartmentalize her emotions. That was always the most difficult part of her job. She needed to remain focused on her task and treat it just like that: a task, a chore. She had to forget the lives these people had been living barely an hour earlier.
To help herself deal, she allowed her focus to split and busied her mind with the information collected on the Borg that she had been reviewing when the ship had come under attack. She regretted that they had collected few details on the queen herself. Even with all that Data had stored in his positronic circuits after his encounter with her, or what Voyager had collected in the Delta Quadrant, there was little of use. Certainly there was nothing to indicate how the queen had come into existence. But the more Beverly’s mind worked to compare the Borg to Terran hive insects, the more possibilities occurred to her.
She suspected that the loss of the queen had triggered a survival mechanism in the race, that perhaps one of the drones had adapted into a temporary “leader” and issued a directive to the surviving Collective: create a new queen. So the queen had not existed from the beginning of the Borg. That would be the easiest explanation for the fact that the Federation had already encountered two versions of the queen. In fact, perhaps this was a natural part of the cycle—of a queen dying and the colony creating a new one. This survival mechanism might also explain why the Borg behaved so violently toward the away team.
To continue the analogy, Beverly theorized that a queen might possibly be created from an adapted drone. But how would such a transformation be accomplished in the cybernetic world of the Borg? Was it a simple matter of attaching the right prosthesis, or of altering the DNA of a drone in much the same way Jean-Luc’s had been altered when he’d been assimilated?
Beverly was so engrossed in her train of thought that she barely heard the doors to sickbay open. Figuring it was another minor injury, she glanced up briefly to see Jean-Luc approaching. His arrival had been anticipated, though she had expected him sooner.
Picard walked directly toward her, but even with his single focus, she could see the slight falter as he saw the remains of the away team lying out on the examination tables. She knew that he would blame himself. Any captain would. But they both knew that this was not the time for that discussion.
“What have you learned, Doctor?” he asked, almost coldly, as he reached the examination table with the remains of Noel DeVrie.
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary,” she reported, “beyond the brutality of the attack itself. The cuts and…dismembering were accomplished by the usual Borg weaponry.” Her voice softened. “Lieutenant Battaglia’s body was not among the dead.”
Jean-Luc looked down at the three bodies laid out beside each other on the tables. “Who would have thought these would be the lucky ones?”
Beverly could see Ensign Wahl’s body tense as her leg was being worked on. The doctor knew that the reaction wasn’t due to the pain. Wahl had heard what the captain had said.
Beverly nodded toward her office and walked with Jean-Luc to continue their conversation in private. She also wanted to get them both away from the gruesome reminder of their losses. Not that there was anywhere on the ship they could go that would be far enough. The death pall clung to both of them with every step.
“What I don’t understand,” she said as she took a seat at her desk, “is the Borg aren’t like this. They aren’t vicious. They’re systematic. Violence is a means to an end. It’s never done for show. The Borg certainly don’t taunt.”
Picard’s lips twisted bitterly. “They are scattered across the galaxy, cut off from one another. And time and time again the Federation has shown them something they’ve rarely seen: defeat. In this case, the Borg have done what they do best. They’ve adapted.”
Beverly tried to ignore the full depth of what that statement could imply.
“You should also know,” he continued,